Mr. Justice Jackson, wouldn’t the best course be for you to object in writing to all the documents which you object to, and then they will be dealt with by the Tribunal after argument.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: But, Your Honor, the Tribunal has once rejected the documents, and yet we get an order to print. The Tribunal’s orders are not being observed, and—I do not want to criticize counsel—but we have had no opportunity to pass on these. These stencils that I stopped running last night are not anything that has been submitted to us. They have no possible place in the legitimate issues of this Tribunal, and we will get nowhere talking to Dr. Thoma about it. He thinks their philosophy is an issue.
What I think must be done here, if we are going to get this solved, is that the Tribunal—if I may make a suggestion, which I do with great deference; I may be a biased judge of what ought to be done; I never pretended to complete impartiality—that the Tribunal name a master to represent it in passing these things. We won’t finish this by discussion between Dr. Thoma and anybody I can name. My suggestion is that an official pass on these documents before they are translated. If the master finds a doubtful matter he can refer it back to you. We should not be in the position either of agreeing or of disagreeing with them in any final sense, of course. I realize it is too big a burden to put on the Tribunal to pass on these papers in advance and too big a burden on the United States to keep printing them. Paper is a scarce commodity today. Over 25,000 sheets have gone into the printing of a book that has been rejected. I think there is no possible way except that a lawyer with some idea of relevance and irrelevance represents this Tribunal in passing on these things in advance, rather than leaving it to counsel.
I would not even venture to sit down with Dr. Thoma, because we start from totally different viewpoints. He wants to justify anti-Semitism. I think it is not an issue here. It is the murder of Jews, of human beings, that is an issue here, not whether the Jewish race is or is not liked by the Germans. We do not care about that. It is a matter of settling these issues.
COLONEL Y. V. POKROVSKY (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): With the Tribunal’s permission, I would like to add a few words to what Mr. Jackson has said.
I do not wish to criticize the counsel either, but the Tribunal has already said that there may possibly be a mistake. And I would like to draw the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that this mistake took place too often. I will permit myself to remind you about the documents in connection with the Versailles Treaty, which were rejected by the Tribunal in the most decided manner as not relevant; the Tribunal will remember also that a considerable amount of time was spent in listening to the reading of the documents presented by Dr. Stahmer and Dr. Horn. And I would like to remind the Tribunal about another fact, when another decision of the Tribunal was violated. Perhaps it was done by mistake; perhaps not. It took place when one of the documents which was presented by Dr. Seidl was published in the papers before it was accepted by the Tribunal as evidence. And it seems to me that it would be very useful if the Tribunal could, for the purpose of saving time, guarantee more effectively that the rules set out by the Tribunal should be obeyed, not only by the Prosecution, who always follow them carefully, but also by the Defense Counsel.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Dr. Thoma?
DR. THOMA: I am very much disconcerted by the reproach that I have not followed the instructions of the Tribunal. During discussions regarding which documents were admissible, I explained in detail just which philosophical works I want to quote from and why. It has been stated during the case for the Prosecution, that Rosenberg invented his philosophy for the purpose of aggressive war and for the committing of war crimes, et cetera. I considered it my duty to prove that this so-called national...
THE PRESIDENT: Will you tell the Tribunal where the Prosecution states that he invented his philosophy, whether in the Indictment or in the presentation?
DR. THOMA: I can prove it. It appears in the Churchill speech; and also in the speech by Justice Jackson there are similar expressions that Rosenberg’s philosophy had led to that.